Some offside comments

Submitted by atomicant on Sun, 2010-06-13 16:37

The world cup was not the only place people gathered to kick a ball around on a patch of grass this weekend. With just the one goal, formed from requisitioned road cones and the ample assistance of a dog we may have technically breached one or two laws and rules, which I won’t elaborate on, while also consuming alcohol with ice and slices of lime.

The men's football world cup correlates with a rise in violence against women, often attributed to alcohol consumption while completely ignoring the onslaught of marketing of a violent misogynistic culture and the celebration of machismo. It doesn’t seem too far fetched to venture a similar collection of sentiments coagulating around another festival of male violence this weekend – the Trooping of the Colour.

In transit from London to the Aldermaston nuclear war and death factory seemed an appropriate situation to experience the fly past of the two RAF bombers. Their purpose is to drop bombs on people and kill them. The troops being cheered on had just come
back from Afghanistan. AWE Aldermaston is a death factory not a ‘centre of excellence’; Trident is a nuclear weapon system not ‘the deterrent'. AWE kills people with radioactivity in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons to kill more. Somewhere there are people we’d rather not share the planet with and would like to annihilate and kill more.

I won’t be cheering on any of these groups of men and as for celebrating the official birthday of the Queen - I will celebrate the end of her reign (whatever the reason that might come about).